Ah, tomatoes how we love them, how we fuss over them, how we crave them, plan them, nurture them, savor them and … yes, hate them, sometimes. Especially in a year like this one (or last year) when the weather (cold, hail, heat, more cold) did its best to thwart everyone’s tomato ambitions. But there was no thwarting for six lucky Front Range gardeners at the annual Nature Sweet Home-Grown Tomato Contest last Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Arvada King Soopers’.

Large tomatoes await judging

Nature Sweet is a commercial tomato grower out of San Antonio, Texas — but they love tomatoes enough to know that a rising tomato-red tide can lift all boats. So they do this contest every year just to celebrate the ambition of tomato gardeners and the wide world of this little red fruit.

Eight-seven people brought their tomatoes to be Brix-tested — a way of measuring the tomato’s sugar level with a little gizmo called a refractometer — and then three finalists in both large and small were taste-tested by a panel of judges that I was lucky enough to be on again.

The winners in each of the two categories got $2,500, and runners-up received $250 King Soopers’ gift cards. The winners (drum roll for wooden spoon and stock pot, please!)

Brix testing a tomato

Large tomato: Mary Burroughs of Denver with a Cherokee Purple tomato that took me right back to my grandfather’s central Illinois farm with its big, round, gardeny beefsteak flavor. (Oh, the platefuls of garden tomatoes we devoured back then…)

Runners up: Mary Lucero of Lafayette with a “Super Fantastic” (the variety that took first place last year, folks) and Matt Brandt of Longmont (who also was a runner-up last year) with a beautiful yellow-red “Mr. Stripey.”)

Small tomatoes: These babies are the sugar rush of the tomato world. The sugar level on a typical Nature Sweet cherry tomato is about 8; one of the cherry finalists rang the sugar bell above 12! Now that’s a sweet tomato! First place went to Veronica Gonzalez of Arvada, with a Sungold that I would have sworn had been dipped in wine before they cut it. Sweet, sweet, sweet, with a winey acid balance that hit me in the pit of the stomach like a first kiss or a swig of beer after a hot day of hoeing. Runners up were Lynne Milane of Erie, with a red cherry; and Jamie Steenport of Longmont with another Sungold.

Also that morning, Chef Tony Baumann and his daughter and business partner, Sam Baumann, were on hand to feed the crowd samples of tomato dishes — and give me some tips on taming garlic.

Tony and Sam had a great skilletful of sauteed cherry tomatoes with just the lightest coating of mild garlic flavor — which is how I think it should be. I like garlic, but I don’t want my taste buds to have to wear a hazmat suit.

Chef Tony Baumann of B&B Culinary Creations

Baumann says to add crushed fresh garlic at the end of cooking — and keep it on the (medium) heat only until you can begin to smell it. Or blanch it first — a couple of minutes in a cup of water from a teakettle, then a dip in ice water to stop that cooking process. Or, adds his daughter, blanch it in milk — milk no warmer than you’d put in a baby’s bottle (that would be about 110 degrees, adds her dad). Add the basil even later. (If you grow garlic, or know someone who does, that’s the best way to get it mild — cook it right out of the garden.)

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a saute pan over medium-high flame until it just starts to smoke. Ad tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Saute, shaking the pan frequently, until tomatoes soften and skins just begin to wrinkle, about 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic and continue to shake the pan until the garlic is fragrant. Remove from heat, stir in the basil and remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil, then serve. Add shavings of cheese if desired.

(Chef Tony adds that you can add a pound of cooked, bite-size pasta at the garlic stage, or the pasta and a pound of julienned grilled chicken breast, to make this a main dish).

The Nature Sweet folks won’t mind if you substitute your own winning home-grown tomatoes. Really. If you’ve got ‘em, this is a great way to use them.

Susan
Very nice article…I especially like the section about the Chef…lol. Thank you for the nice mention. I’m glad you liked our cooking.
I’ve book-marked your blog and intend to continue reading.
Thanks again.

Tony Baumann

Susan
Very nice article…I especially like the section about the Chef…lol. Thank you for the nice mention. I’m glad you liked our cooking.
I’ve book-marked your blog and intend to continue reading.
Thanks again.

Susan Clotfelter has always played in the dirt, but got dragged into gardening as an obsession when she reclaimed her hell corner: a weed-infested patch of clay inhabited by one tough, lonely lilac and a thicket of weeds. Along with training as a Colorado State University Extension Master Gardener volunteer, she dug deeper with beds of herbs and lettuce at her home and rows of vegetables wherever she could borrow land. She writes for The Denver Post and other publications and appears on community radio.

Julie's passion for gardening began in spring of 2000 when she bought a fixer-upper in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, and realized that the landsape was in desperate need of some TLC. During the drought of 2003, she decided to give up on bluegrass and xeriscape her front yard. She wrote about the journey in the Rocky Mountain News, in a series called Mud, Sweat & Tears: A Xeriscape story. Julie is an avid veggie gardener as well as a seasoned water gardener.